We know that more teachers are desperately needed in England, and that some subject specialisms experience particularly severe shortages (Maisuria et al., 2023). Seemingly less of a policy concern, but arguably just as worrying, is that the vast majority of teachers identify as White women (DfE, 2023). This patterning raises the question of whether others find it more difficult to pursue teaching, and results in the dominant social image of a teacher as a White woman.

In a new open access paper, published in the British Education Research Journal, I analyse empirical data from longitudinal interviews which took place between 2009/10 and 2020/21 tracking three young White women in England from age 10/11 to age 21/22, at which point all three were becoming teachers (MacLeod, 2025). While most research exploring teacher supply uses one-off quantitative methods (See et al., 2022), thanks to secondary data from the ASPIRES project these data spanning 11 years enable an in-depth analysis of how teachers narrate their pathway into the profession for the first time.

The participants in this study were pursuing different teaching specialisms, via different initial teacher education (ITE) routes, and in different parts of the country. Yet longitudinal analyses revealed that all went back-and-forth between teaching and other careers, often several times. For example, despite having wanted to teach since a young age, at age 15/16 one participant said that they did not feel ‘capable’ of completing the academic qualifications needed to become a teacher and were now looking at alternative careers. Another participant described how she had applied for multiple graduate schemes in marketing before choosing to pursue teaching on ‘a whim’. Indeed, in order to become teachers all of the participants made significant compromises such as pursuing a different ITE route than originally planned, or accepting a lower bursary than expected. As such, none of these participants experienced a smooth or linear pathway into teaching.

Despite these intermittent and interrupted pathways, once they were pursuing teaching each participant implied that teaching was their ‘vocation’. At age 21/22, for example, one reported that she had ‘always known’ that she would become a teacher, despite having changed her plans several times and applied to several non-teaching routes before pursuing ITE. At the same age, another participant who had previously said that she longer wanted to teach told me that teaching had ‘remained constant’ in her life ever since she had played teachers as a young child.

How does this idea that teaching was ‘meant to be’ for some impact those who do not feel they were destined to teach?

In the paper I suggest that this narrative of vocation highlights how participants made sense of their complex journeys towards teaching by ignoring or downplaying the challenges they had worked to overcome in order to present teaching as an almost natural, or inevitable, choice for them. While on the one hand this narrative shows how participants made sense of their messy and multidirectional pathways into teaching, on the other hand participants’ use of this narrative implies that they believed they were ‘meant’ to teach. The notion that some people were ‘born’ to teach is not new (Madero, 2020), but it is striking that the teachers in this study used this messaging despite it being contradictory to their longitudinal data. Importantly, against a backdrop of teacher shortages, this messaging that teaching is a vocation may impact those who do not feel that they were destined to teach. In particular, I suggest that this narrative that teaching is ‘a calling’ might discourage those who do not feel that they were ‘born’ or ‘destined’ to teach.

‘The narrative that teaching is “a calling” might discourage those who do not feel that they were “born” or “destined” to teach.’

Furthermore, the data in this paper indicate that White women may find it easier to position themselves as having been ‘born’ or ‘destined’ to teach. This implication raises the question: ‘How can we support those who do not identify as White women to feel that teaching is for them?’ Part of the response to this complex question is that teaching must be celebrated as a skill or expertise that can be developed through professional education, rather than a natural gift than some people are more likely to possess. To do this I call for increased careers education, information, advice and guidance in schools, colleges and universities about teacher education and what is involved in becoming a teacher. If teaching continues to be seen as something that only (some) White women are born to do, then patterned teacher shortages look set to continue.

This blog post is based on the article ‘“I’ve always known that I would become a teacher”: How White women narrate their choice to teach, and what this means for teacher recruitment’ by Emily MacLeod, published in the British Educational Research Journal.

References

Department for Education [DfE]. (2023). School workforce in England: Reporting year 2023. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england

MacLeod, E. (2025). ‘I’ve always known that I would become a teacher’: How White women narrate their choice to teach, and what this means for teacher recruitment. British Educational Research Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4162

Madero, C. (2020). A calling to teach: What the literature on callings tells us about approaches to research the calling to the teaching profession. Religion & Education, 47(2), 170–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/15507394.2020.1728028

Maisuria, A., Roberts, N., Long, R., & Danechi, S. (2023). Teacher recruitment and retention in England: December 2023. House of Commons Library. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7222/

See, B. H., Munthe, E., Ross, S. A., Hitt, L., & El Soufi, N. (2022). Who becomes a teacher and why? Review of Education, 10(3), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3377